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BY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
A study of 60 four-year-old children watching SpongeBob SquarePants, PBS’ Caillou, or assigned to draw pictures showed that watching nine minutes of the cartoon sponge affects the attention spans of pre-schoolers.
Immediately after their viewing and drawing tasks were complete, the kids were asked to perform four tests to assess executive function.
According to CNN, researchers tested the memory and thinking skills of the children who watched SpongeBob, and the kids who watched the Nickelodeon cartoon scored much worse on thinking tests than those in the two other groups, who scored about equally.
The researchers suspect that the brain gets overtaxed from constant stimulation of the fast-paced cartoons, which led to lower scores.
NorthJersey.com reports that researchers are saying past studies have previously linked television with long-term attention problems in children, but this one indicates problems can occur after even limited exposure — results that parents of young children should be made aware.The researchers said cartoon shows normally feature about 22 minutes of action so watching a full program "could be even more damaging."
The Los Angeles Times reports that Nickelodeon said "having 60 non-diverse kids, who are not part of the show's target demographic, watch nine minutes of programming could not possibly provide the basis for any valid findings that parents could trust."
Nickelodeon said that "SpongeBob" is intended to be viewed by kids of age groups 6 to 11.
No research has yet been reported on the effect of overexposure of reality television to adults.
